Not PC

. . . promoting capitalist acts between consenting adults.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

As my farewell to you all for the year (now, now, don't cry), I've posted links below to some of my own favourite and more reflective posts from the past year so that you don't get 'Not PC' withdrawal over the holiday season. I've tried over the year to be pithy, thought-proving and entertaining -- I've enjoyed writing these pieces, and I'd like to thank all of you who've visited here, enjoyed them and left me feedback about what you've read.

Feel free to print off a few copies of each of these and take them with you to the beach. :-)

The city's expansion is inevitable -- equally inevitable is it's decentralisation. Technology makes it so. Fighting that is like fighting on the side of Canute, only when one fights this inevitability one fights against the will of individuals...

...And the little people of this fair land did all that they were allowed to do and all that they were told to do, and many houses on many hills were erected in the fashion that BIA determinations and approvals said they were allowed to be and told to be.

So how is such a clash of values to be played out? There are only three options, as I see it. 1) Violent conflict; 2) Politicisation of the issue--the current default position involving picketing, bickering and politicking; 3) Property rights.

Crocodile fatalities expose ethical flaw in environmentalismThe Northern Territory has 'enjoyed' a three-decade ban on hunting crocodiles that has seen their numbers jump from 5,000 to 70,000, crocodiles appearing in the backyards of suburban Darwin, and a corresponding increase in savage and often fatal croc attacks -- and still the absurd ban has been continued. You might say that these people were killed by an idea; a very bad idea...

The "Problem" of Initial Acquisition...Cohen argues that all the world’s resources were originally "jointly owned" and therefore, like Proudhon, he claims that all property is therefore theft. “Why was its original privatization not a theft of what rightly should (have continued to) be held in common?” he asks...

I'm enormously sad to learn that New Zealand Tennis have finally driven tennis ace Chris Lewis from New Zealand. Chris is a wonderful sportsman and a tremendous human being, and his departure for California leaves me angry at his treatment here...

There are parts of oursouls that no rock music will ever reach. If we are to be true to ourselves, we need to search out music that does and let it reach us. What that means is searching out music that has the scope, depth and integration that our lives...

Live 8 LosersThe bleeding hearts of Geldof anf Bono offer the lesson that if it's the thought that counts, then you should at least make sure your thought is a good one. And here's a good thought: If you want to help the victims of bad governance — which presently describes most of Africa — then don't give the bad governments money...

Not every culture is worth saving or preserving. There are some cultures that deserved to die out -- the Maya were just one, and on this as so much else Jared Diamond's book Collapse has it wrong again. As a tragic loss, they weren't, and Roger Sandall is...

So why exactly was so much taxpayer money so poorly accounted for? I'm glad you asked. It was wasted because Wetere & Sons & Daughters were just cashing in on the latest 'free-market' fad: educational vouchers...

2005-07-27: "It's very hard to invest in coal [because of Kyoto], nuclear's a sort of four letter word...hydro is suddenly becoming too hard...what's left?...we can't do everything on windpower," says Jenkins. And if there's no power, there's no industry...

...good government is like a guard dog: it's there to protect us from being done over by others. However, if that dog is badly trained and it gets off the chain, we can be badly savaged -- more so sometimes than we would have been without the dog.

Making freedom concreteSo what exactly is it, then? 'Freedom' is not freedom from reality, as is sometimes claimed; it is not freedom to have your own way regardless of the rights of others; it is not a license to ride roughshod over others or their property...

Selling the foreshore ...Personally, I think New Zealand's foreshore should have all existing property recognised and protected (no matter what colour the rightful beneficiaries of those rights) before selling what remains to buy secure annuities for New Zealand's pensioners. That's one very easy and very effective way to instantly de-politicise both the foreshore issue and the issue of the impending superannuation blowout...

...Thomas Sowell points out that the racially-segregated seating Rosa Parks won deserved fame for opposing barely existed in the American South until municipal transit systems operated by the state replaced privately-owned transit systems:

"I don't like drugs." Fine. Your business. I don't like Pink Floyd. But I don't demand that anyone write a law about it, nor do I ask for the criminalisation of otherwise law-abiding Pink Floyd users...

We Are All Londoners Today"We are all Londoners today." Doesn't that describe the way all people with a soul feel this morning? The vibrant, tolerant city of London is today's front line in the battle for those Western values that makes cities across the West the great places they are...

...Politicians only understand one thing at election time: that you voted either for them or against them. If for example you hold your nose and vote Team Blue just to get out Team Red, then Team Blue will see that as a vote for them...

Running the rule over the NatsJohn Armstrong runs the rule over the Nats behind Brash, and as those of us who can remember the Nats when they were in power might testify they come up three feet short of a yard...

...on the conviction and sentencing of Schapelle Corby, New Zealand's Greens have been studiously silent when all logic surely tells them that -- guilty or innocent -- poor Schapelle is a martyr to the War on Drugs to which their principles should tell...

The thing is, if he had principles he would be fine. How so? Let me explain by pointing out how I would see a Libertarianz caucus of six behaving in parliament. It would be unlike that of any other party, and something only a party of principle could mana

What's a libertarian for?Reader Justin has politely but firmly asked why some libertarians bother with Libertarianz. "For all your professed admiration for rationality and goal-orientation, you seem to be sorely lacking it...

Cue_Card_LibertarianismI haven't posted as many of these 'introductions to the terms used by libertarians' as I'd planned -- too much other writing to post, I guess -- but be reassured that the material is all there and just waiting to go. In the meantime, here's the two-dozen or so Cue Cards that have already been released to the wild...

Man, the enlightened being

Excerpts here from Frank Lloyd Wright’s poetic 1953 Christmas message on “man the enlightened being”: “The herd disappears and reappears, but the sovereignty of the individual persists.” [Note that Wright did not understand ‘Democracy’ to mean “a counting of heads regardless of content” as we do at 'Not PC'; by Democracy he simply meant Freedom – he used the two words virtually interchangeably.] The spirit and overwhelming benevolence of his words make them appropriate to post here on this Christmas Eve as this blog closes down for the festive season.

Literature tells about man. Architecture presents him. The Architecture that our man of Democracy needs and prophecies is bound to be different from that of the common or conditioned man of any other socialized system of belief. As never before, this new Free-Man’s Architecture will present him by being true to his own nature in all such expressions. This aim becomes natural to him in his Art as it once was in his Religion.

With renewed vision, the modern man will use the new tools Science lavishes upon him (even before he is ready for them) to enlarge his field of action by reducing his fetters to exterior controls, especially those of organized Authority, publicity, or political expediency.

He will use his new tools to develop his own Art and Religion as the means to keep him free, as himself. Therefore this democratic man’s environment, like his mind, will never be style-ized. When and wherever he builds he will not consent to be boxed. He will himself have his style.

The Democratic man demands conscientious liberty for himself no more nor less than he demands liberty for his neighbor. The way of life he calls Civilization will expand according to his inner vision to develop the integral beauty derived only from self-culture. This man’s own conscience will be is constant concern and aim to correct his social standards in all acts that proceed from him. This constant vigilance constitutes his only guarantee of Freedom.

The true democrat will seek and find ‘safety’ in knowledge and courageous practice of the organic, or interior, laws of Nature, suspicious of all exterior interference or preparation for the use of Force.

Whenever organic justice is denied him he will not believe he can get it by murder but must obtain it by continuing fair dealing and enlightenment at whatever cost. He will never force upon others his own beliefs nor his own ways. He will display his social methods to others as best advantage as critic or missionary only when sought by them. His neighbor will be to him (as he is to himself) free to choose his own way according to his own light, their common cause being the vision of the uncommon-man wherein every man is free to grow to the stature his freedom in America under the Constitution of these United States grants him.

Exterior compulsion absent in him, no man need be inimical to him. Conscience, thus indispensable to his own freedom, becomes normal to every man.

As this vision of Democracy thus clears, man’s powers would naturally increase. The soul of his society – Art and Religion – would gain dignity and range by constant performance until his life became that of a whole man: a wholesome one instead of the fraction the common man is: under-nourished or over-built by exterior controls, especially by those of Education.

Peace would become normal but reform of the World so far as that reform was his concern could only begin with his own reform and proceed from there. Remember the men who gave us our [American] Nation. We have ‘the Declaration’ and our Constitution because they were individualist.

Great Art is still living for us only because of Individualists like Beethoven. We have creative men on earth today only as they are free to continually arise as individuals from obscurity to demonstrate their dignity and worth above the confusion raised by the herding of the common-man by aid of the scribes and Pharisees of his time—quantity ignoring or overwhelming quality.

The herd disappears and reappears but the sovereignty of the individual persists.

Observe the buildings of the world. Uniqueness to Time, Place and Man constitutes the great universality we call the Art of Architecture. It is this appropriation to circumstance – not what buildings possess in common – that is the greatest virtue of all great Art.RESUMÉ: Winds blow, fires burn, water falls, and the law of gravitation holds but not what all have in common interests us most. Universality is no virtue in itself. It may only be weakness or default.

To the individual we must look for that quality in life we call creative. In the depth of a man’s Faith would lie his true humility, that of the IDEAL MAN. His prayer would be humble only to ever-changing never-ending LIFE.

Friday, December 23, 2005

The meaning of Christmas

Christmas is not Jesus' birthday. Jesus wasn't born on December 25th, he was born in July, which makes him a Cancer. Like religion*.

Christmas was originally not a Christian festival at all, but the lusty pagan festival of Saturnalia, celebrating the winter solstice and the time when days once again began to lengthen. Dark Age Christians couldn't stop the revels, so they stole them instead. (Just think, the first Grinch Who Stole Christmas was really a pope!)

The best of Christmas is still pagan. The drinking; the celebrations; the gift-giving; the trees and the decorations; the eating and the singing; the whole full-blooded, rip-roaring, free-wheeling, overwhelming, benevolent materialism of the holiday -- all of it all pagan.

Says Leonard Peikoff in 'Why Christmas Should Be More Commercial', the festival is "an exuberant display of human ingenuity, capitalist productivity, and the enjoyment of life." I'll drink to all that, and then I'll come back for seconds. Ayn Rand sums it up:

The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property (though it is supposed to be part, but is a largely unobserved part) of the Christian religion.

The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: ‘Merry Christmas’—not ‘Weep and Repent.’ And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance....

The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized. The gift-buying is good for business and good for the country’s economy; but, more importantly in this context, it stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decoration put up by department stores and other institutions—the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors—provide the city with a spectacular display, which only ‘commercial greed’ could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

How to get poor, and how to get rich again

New blogger Lindsay Mitchell genuiinely wonders why we aren't broke. Good question. Just look how much we're costing ourselves! Who cares, says 'Who Cares' -- another new blogger: Let's regulate our way to prosperity. Don't stop with the minimum wage: let's go the whole hog and pass an 'End Poverty Bill.' Who could possibly object?

Council comes to the party

In the spirit of Christmas, it's time to give Auckland City Council a bouquet for once, and fortunately they've made it easy:

The Auckland City Council announced yesterday that its noise control officers would not investigate any complaints for seven hours from 6pm, New Year's Eve. The move means the council will tolerate any kind of noise level before 1am, said Chris Dee, the council's environmental health and licensing manager... He said the move recognised that New Year's Eve was traditionally a time of revelry.

Save those whales...

You have to laugh. Hundreds of people trying to save the whales, and the whales just don't[ want to save themselves. Rescued whales return to shore is the headline, explaining that after rescuers pushed a pod of 100 whales out to sea from the Nelson beach where they were stranded, the whales turned back round and just headed on back to shore. Intelligent beasts, whales.

Which is a nice way to segue to George Carlin, don't you think. Think of it as a thought for summer:

Everybody's gonna save something now. Save the trees. Save the bees. Save the whales. Save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all - save the planet. What? What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another. We're gonna save the fucking planet? I'm gettin' tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day. I'm tired of these self righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People tryin' to make the world safe for their Volvos.

Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet, not in the abstract they don't, not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live, their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened, self interest doesn't impress me. Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet, nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The people are fucked. Difference, difference. The planet is fine.

Compared to the people, the planet is doing great- been here 4 1/2 billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here 4 1/2 billion years. We've been here what, a hundred thousand, maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus 4 1/2 billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the Sun? The planet has been through a lotworse than us, been through all kinds of things worse than us, been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, Sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...

You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii who are frozen into position, from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing. Wanna know if the planet's alright? Ask those people in Mexico City or Armenia or a hundred other places buried under thousands of tons of earthquake rubble, if they feel like a threat to the planet this week. How 'bout those people in Kilauea, Hawaii who build their homes right next to an active volcano, and then wonder why they have lava in the living room.

The planet will be here for a long, long, long time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover. The Earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the Earth plus plastic. The Earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth. The Earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. 'Could be the only reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself, didn't know how to make it, needed us.

'Could be the answer to our age old, egocentric, philosophical question: "Why are we here?" "Plastic, asshole."

No rest for the wicked. Or for the G-Man.

G-Man is promising to forego Christmas holidays to keep an eye on all the dirty laundry leaking, nay pouring out of the Beehive now that vacations and revels are nearly upon us, and the press gallery have begun renting out their brain cells to the local breweries. He's already got a pretty tidy-looking laundry list of lunacy and apologetics. See.

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his holiday for the sheeple. If you want to keep up to date while all the rest of us are at the beach or exploring the bottom of several wine glasses (or both), looks like he's going to be your man.

Iran shows impeccable taste

In the interests of balance and fairness, let me say something good about Iran. Maybe it's not as unenlightened and regressive as you might think. Perhaps instead it's far-sighted and forward-thinking, and at the very least, its leaders show impeccable taste. I say this because they've just banned Kenny G and The Eagles. Repressive stone-age barbarian Ahmadinejad might be, but I'm thinking that for once we can all learn something from Iran. :-)[Hat tip LibertyScott]

Investing in rail failure

The Government has come up with a way to invest $540-600 million dollars in something with a current book value of $81 million, after which the book value of the investment will be worth... $81 million. That's $1800 spent for every household in Auckland, with a net return on investment of just zero. Brilliant.

If the decision to 'invest' in Auckland's moribund rail non-system doesn't show how governments wipe out the value of taxpayers' hard-earned money, then you're just not ready to learn the lessson. LibertyScott has answers to all the counter-arguments you're trying to dream up. Go and argue with him about all the social and environmental benefits. "They are just too infinitesimal to measure," he says.

[UPDATE: Not just $1800 per household, but as DPF has worked out, with "just under 9,000 passengers a day which is 0.6% of Aucklanders, if they spend $600 million that will be a spend of $67,000 per passenger. Hmmmmm." Why don't they just give that money to train-travellers so they can buy themselves a car?]

Judge John Jones ruled the school board had violated the constitutional ban on teaching religion in public schools. The 11 parents who brought the case argued that teaching intelligent design (ID) was effectively teaching creationism, which is banned.

They complained the theory - which argues life must have been helped to develop by an unseen power - is tantamount to religious education. The separation of church and state is enshrined in the US constitution.

"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the board amount to a pretext for the board's real purpose, which was to promote religion," said Judge John Jones... ID was not science, he said, and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."

Finance applets for fun and study

Much like Carl Weiman's fun and functional applets to help discover and understand the basic concepts of physics (which I mentioned here), the finance applets are intended to help make complicated financial concepts easier to calculate, and a way for my friend "to learn and understand mathematical modelling in financial economics."

Enjoy, and please do leave feedback -- it will help to refine both the applets and the site.

'Eternal Spring' - Rodin

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Think. Life's worth it.

"People who lead more intellectually stimulating lives are somehow protected from mental decline." That is the unsurprising result of some recent research, which shows "that people who stay mentally engaged throughout their lives may have a greater 'cognitive reserve' that allows them to withstand more of the brain damage seen in Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms begin."

"The physical-fitness principle of 'use it or lose it' may apply, in a fashion, to the brain as well," said the study’s lead author, Dr. Ross Andel of the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.

Ironically however, this also means that the higher your 'cognitive reserve,' the quicker the onset of degenerative diseases like Alzheimers once symptoms do occur. Explains Michael Rutter, from the Institute of Psychiatry in London: "People with a good education and who have Alzheimer's disease are able to combat the symptoms more effectively, so that by the time the problems appear, they are at a relatively late stage of the disease."

The message then: intellectual pursuits that challenge and extend us are good, not just in the moment (as I talked about with the idea of 'flow'), not just because intellectual activity helps us to better understand and change the world around us, and not just because they provide their own reward -- but because they also extend our mental life. Talking of the 'cognitive reserve' built up by intellectual stimulation, Yaakov Stern, of Columbia University in the US, said: "This is as powerful as any drug we will ever have to stop Alzheimer's progression."

Cue Card Libertarianism - Fascism

The defining characteristics of Fascism do not include jackboots, smart uniforms and violent racism. Fascism is simply Socialism/Communism with a cosmetic difference: whereas Socialism/ Communism nationalises and abolishes private property and the 'commanding heights' of the economy, fascism permits the façade of private ownership of property to remain, while nationalising the people who own them.

Under fascism, the illusion of ownership remains but the government assumes power of use and disposal over the property – i.e. whereas under Socialism/Communism the state becomes the de jure owner, under Fascism the state becomes the de facto owner. “Let them own land or factories as much as they please,' declared Adolph Hitler: "The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless of whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper… Why need we trouble to socialise banks and factories? We socialise human beings.”

Hitler’s published utterances are an instructive testimony to the essential unity of Socialism and Fascism. His National Socialist Party’s political programme reads in part like a Green Party wish-list, which, when implemented, won plaudits from many collectivist politicians in freer countries. Unemployment was artificially eliminated, grandiose welfare programmes were enacted, onerous taxes, regulations and controls imposed.

For too long, people have allowed themselves to be diverted by a phoney dichotomy between Communism and Fascism, whereas careful analysis shows that both are forms of collectivism, treating the individual as a means to an end: the “common good.” Neither in theory nor in practice is there any essential difference between Marx's “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” and Hitler's “Each activity and each need of the individual will be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good.” The real dichotomy is not between Communism and Fascism, but between freedom and dictatorship. The 'dichotomy' between Fascism and Communism is merely between two competing forms of dictatorship.

* * * * *

You have two cows. Under Communism: the government takes both, and gives you a chit for vodka. Under Socialism: the government takes both, and gives them to your neighbour. Under Fascism: the government takes your milk. Under capitalism: you have two cows. You sell one, and buy a bull.

This is part of a continuing series explaining the concepts and terms used by libertarians, originally published in The Free Radical in 1993. The 'Introduction' to the series is here. The list so far can be found on the sidebar.

Wiping Israel off the map - politely

How concerned would this make you if you lived in Israel, or had family there:

the president of your near neighbour is a holocaust-denier;

To loud public cheers he declares your country should be wiped off the map;

his country's scientists and industry are working rapidly towards making that country the next nuclear state;

worldwide reaction to all this would embarrass Neville Chamberlain: The US State Department for example wonders whether this country "is prepared to engage as a responsible member of that community." The UN's chief hand-wringer Koffi Annan expresses "dismay." Ouch. That'll worry them in Tehran, eh?

Cox & Forkum (cartoon above), Mark Steyn and Daniel Pipes between them describe the outrage that is the nearly-nuclear state of Iran and Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the limpdick reaction to Ahmadinejad's threats.

Perhaps he just doesn't understand basic economics, huh? Tell me again how it's a good thing to strangle producers and exporters in a bid to keep down the prices of property? As I asked last time Bollard flopped out his blunt instrument:

Does anyone else wonder at the sanity of strangling the backbone of our economy -- producers and exporters -- in order to deal to "the profligate household sector"? Is that sane? And, given that many household borrowers are fairly well insulated from Reserve Bank interest rate hikes, will another Reserve Bank interest rate hike deal to them anyway?

And why should they be 'dealt to' anyway? Why is the 'price stability' of Bollard's 'basket of goods' such an important thing, and should New Zealand producers and exporters be sacrificed on the 'cross of stability' of this basket? Don't prices in a free market rise and fall naturally as a way of clearing markets? Is that such a bad thing? Don't free markets, when they're left free, exhibit over time a gentle 'deflation'? Why is that a problem?

How "profligate" is the household sector? Why is it "profligate" to pay what you can afford? And just whose money is it anyway?

There is an enormous misconception about inflation that helps fuel the Reserve Bank's meddling, and that sees otherwise intelligent free-marketeers supporting the meddling. What is usually thought of as inflation, ie., a galloping increase in prices and a consequent fall in the purchasing power of a dollar, is in fact the consequence of real inflation, ie., the money supply being inflated. 'Price inflation,' has become become conflated and confused with real inflation. There is no way to determine the difference between price increases due to the increase in the money supply -- ie., 'price inflation,' prices increasing for real and genuine market-induced reasons, just as there is no way for the interest rates to to stop 'price inflation' without also stifling producers and exporters.

The biggest effect of the Reserve Bank's inflation fighting has been to strangle producers and exporters and to deny New Zealand's future prosperity, just as much and in a similar way as Muldoon's wages and prices freeze of 1973 did the same job. The truth is that as long as the money supply itself is not inflated (which is what 'inflation' actually means) there is little need and every reason not to try and achieve price stability. Let prices be what they should be: signals to the market, not a call for strangulation and the use of Alan Bollard's blunt instrument.

Oil at a record high?

One of the dumb stories of the year, one heard in constant refrain, has been the "oil prices are at a record high" story. But it's just not true. Who would have thought: journalists looking for an easy story and politicians looking for a scare, and neither of them interested in the facts.

The graph above from July 2005 shows the story: oil prices since 1970 (shown in constant July 2005 dollars). Have prices in 2005 been high? Yes. Have there been good economic and geo-political reasons for the price rises? Why, yes there has been: refinery problems and a war in Iraq reducing supply; and a rising standard of living in Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) increasing demand. (Excessive taxes on production and exploration might not be considered 'good' reasons, but they do play a significant role in keeping prices high.) But the total supply of oil has still increased in recent years, even as scaremongers and Jeanette Fitzsimons tell you otherwise.

Supply increases because of human ingenuity. Proved world reserves of oil, which were 762 billion barrels in 1984, are now estimated at 1,189 billion barrels. As for the growth of demand, which normally follows population and revenue growth, [economist Julian] Simon argued that it would be dampened by new technologies that reduce the use of oil (like lighter cars), and eventually by new materials. The value of petroleum as a proportion of finished products will continue to decrease. And contrary to Malthusian fears, population growth will spur the potential for inventions.

As long as politicians and other meddlers keep out of the way of the entrepreneurs and innovators, higher prices when they exist will be a spur to increased production and the introduction of new and alternative technologies. Political meddling will only hinder any transformation that needs to happen.

'Goldfish' - Klimt

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Clapton on Robert Johnson: Going with the flow

What an odd mix is Eric Clapton. A reserved, almost donnish Englishman, and still one of the world's great guitar heroes. Born and raised far from Mississippi or Chicago, yet he wields unquestionably one of the finest blues guitars the world has heard.

And he understands the psychology of creativity too, about which more below.

Clapton however has always been constrained by genre. Listening to much of his music over the years, his blues solos are the moments which are clearly and majestically him, the moments when he really stretches out, and his guitar gently aches and weeps -- at these moments he seems to be playing from and expressing his soul. But over the course of many years the number of solos has been too few, and the song structure within which those solos are contained has too often been too constraining, and to my ear often just too insipid to allow his soul to sing. Most of his albums -- including his latest dreary offering 'Back Down' -- have not unfortunately been crammed full of emotionally and technically challenging blues music, but too often have been mostly featureless terrains of musically- and emotionally-shallow mush-- stretching neither him nor his audience. They have however paid for an awful lot of fine living.

But just occasionally it's possible to hear the real Clapton -- and boy can he play when he wants to! A recent DVD/CD set in which Clapton plays songs from blues legend Robert Johnson (pictured right) is one recent and brilliant example: this captures the real Clapton, playing beautifully, expressively, and from the heart. The blues, it's sometimes said, ain't nothin' but the sound of a good man feelin' bad -- Johnson's songs are the real thing: they ache with emotion; Clapton clearly feels it, and when he does feel it you can hear it in his guitar.

He points out however in an interview on the DVD that playing these songs is by no means easy -- Johnson's seemingly simple songs are a mare's nest of difficulties and complexity. Clapton the guitar hero confesses he's not entirely able to play what Johnson played and recorded seventy years ago. Like pianist Art Tatum, listening to Johnson's recordings makes you convinced there's two people playing.

When I first heard him, [says Clapton], I think Keith Richards said this too, that we all thought there was, he was being accompanied by someone, it sounded like it. And it wasn't unusual in those days, I mean, you often had a piano player and a guitar player, or two guitar players. And it wasn't until later that I realized you could do it, what he does. But you have to really, I mean, I've had to, I've had to work really hard in the last few days, to try and do some of the things that I needed to do to play along. And I, and, and, and my, my take on Robert Johnson so far is that it needs two people, to play what he plays and sing at the same time.

Clapton describes his struggle trying to get just one song right, and concludes that getting it exactly right, "I think to do that would be a life's work. I mean, it seriously would be a life's work for any musician." He has problems with one song in particular, Stones in My Passway, and despite never really mastering it, he's clearly relishing the artistic and technical challenge.

Until I and I still can't, I can't do it completely right, I can kind of get an approximation. But, I mean, it's almost one of those things where you listen to it, it just sounds so relaxed. And yet when you come to try it and do it, you find out how almost virtually impossible it is. And I've had to work on this every morning and every night for the last week, to try and just do one song like that. So that's pretty difficult.

"Pretty difficult" for Eric Clapton means well-nigh impossible for ordinary mortals --- this simple-sounding music is in fact fiendishly difficult to play, which is part of what offers Clapton his reward for playing it. In an interview for the DVD, Clapton describes what he feels when he's playing this difficult music; his description makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the psychology of creativity, and of what makes people truly happy, satisfied and fulfilled:

Well, it's the closest thing to being truly in the moment I can experience really, I think. If I'm, if I'm just in a social situation, and we're, I mean, me alone, part of me is there, a good deal of it. You know, maybe 75% part of my brain is off somewhere, thinking about what I'm gonna do tomorrow, will, have I got everything I need to make the journey I'm gonna make, etcetera, etcetera. Did I do, did I forget something about what we were supposed to do yesterday.

I mean, but doing that kind of work, especially the stuff that we're doing, with just me and the acoustic, requires such concentration that I am, I think this is close as I get to being really in the moment. And then everything, time just sort of stands still, and at the same time seems to go by very quickly. It's all, it's all like, a kind of roller, it's like being in a, in an accident. It's just a blur. But I love it, you know, I love, I love that kind of, when it feels like it's really going well, and, and, and I'm just in tune and in harmony with time. It's a great, it's a great feeling.

Anyone who's ever been fully absorbed in that creative moment will know exactly what he's talking about -- and we don't have to be a world class guitar hero to feel it. Hungarian-US psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes that state as one of "optimal experice, or flow," a state in which you are:

being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost.

Csikszentmihalyi has studied creative and high-achieving individuals, and he describes the phenomenon of their 'being in the flow' in their work as both their defining attribute, and their reward. 'Flow' itself is a function of a person's skills and the challenge before them. "Optimal experience, or flow, occurs when both variables are high," says Csikszentmihalyi. Too simple a challenge for our skills and we feel bored; too much of a challenge and we feel anxiety. But like Red Riding Hood eating Baby Bear's porridge, if things are 'just right' and our skills are being challenged to the right degree, then we too find ourselves in 'flow' in just the way Clapton describes.

Ayn Rand described "productive work [as] the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work – pride is the result." If our work is what integrates us, then being in 'flow' through our work is our psychological reward for doing it well.

There are a number of implications of Csikszentmihalyi's research, including important implications for career choice, for artistic creativity, for education, and even for how we choose to relax (see image at right). Productive and creative work can be seen not just as important existentially, but also psychologically, and selfishly.

Once we understand what 'flow' is and its importance to us, we can seek to maximise our time 'in the flow' rather than simply existing in a drone-lie manner, or engaging in mindless pleasure-seeking. Csikszentmihalyi for example contrasts enjoyment and pleasure, explaining "that the difference was that pleasure lacked a sense of achievement or active contribution to the result." Work or pleasure done 'in flow' need not be tiring; if done properly, it might instead be galvanising!

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Recent
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Parting is such sweet sorrow...
Man, the enlightened being
The meaning of Christmas
I love the atheist manifesto! and I love that quote at the start. It's brilliant.
I like the idea of celebrating the Saturnalia!
First time visitor to this site; you've just got my readership with this post. I love it!
As an aside, you may be interested in this.
How to get poor, and how to get rich again
Just proving that we are wicked, wicked people who couldn't possible be trusted with tax cuts.

Or indeed, control over anything!
I see Mitchell only allows blogger people to comment - so I will say it here.

She seems to have problem with women. Her post on child support is one of the most appalling I have ever seen - http://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com/2005/12/more-on-child-support.html

The argument was that men were financially responsible for their children whether or not such fathers were part of the family household. This was surely a profound mistake. Men’s responsibility is to be committed parents who look after their children by actually living with them...

Making a man pay for the upkeep of his children in such circumstances simply because he was the biological father was unfair and inconsistent.

This is pure bullshit. I don't know what group of losers she is associated with - maybe Men's Rights or some such - but any man with an ounce of integrity is happy to pay for the upkeep of his children - whether he lives with them or not.
She appears to me, to be saying that women should look to breeding with men of integrety.

Not reproducing with all & sundry and expecting the taxpayer to bail them out for their bad choices.

In other words, get it right of their will be unpleasant consequences.
Hey Oswald. You know I like you - but I think she is bashing women on her blog- and offers no solutions either.

Sure we would all like men with integrity.But it takes two to tango.
And I intend to get all the benefits I can - so the anti-DPB brigade like Mitchell can bite me.

Since our famly has paid 6 figure tax bills for years I am entitled to get some of it back.

So there Lindsay Mitchell. When YOU have paid such tax you can lecture me about deserting husbands and leeching off the state - sob.
Indeed, it IS an attack. A great many of these women deserve to come under attack, as do the deadbeat males that are as much a part of the problem!

Having followed Lindsay's writings on the subject for a few years now, IMO, she is more anti the 'DPB as a way of lifestyle' women. I don't recall her saying banish it totally, but reform it.

Too many use it as a career, not as the intended safety net.One reason your family has been paying outrageous tax bills!

I have often written on the subject of 'bludging beneficeries'I'm refering to exactly those- not to the person maimed or incapacitated. Not to the person between jobs, nor the abandoned wife who will soon be working again.

I attack the bludgers- the no-talent 'artists', the junkies, the lazy and the useless by choice. If peoples see fit to include all benificaries in my attach, it is their lack of comprehension that has caused them to see it that way.

I can't speak for Lindsay- her beliefs are her own, but when you look at her writing in the same light as mine- well, make up your own mind!
Hi Ruth

It is easy enough to create an account (free) which would enable you to comment on my blog. I'm certainly not barring anybody.

I'm not interested in men's rights and I'm not interested in women's rights. The only rights I care about are those of the individual and they are few.(I will post an article I wrote about "men's rights" at my blog).

You actually illustrate what is wrong with the welfare system when you mention your "entitlement". I work with beneficiaries in a voluntary capacity and see that the culture of entitlement is pervasive, corrupt and value-destroying. It saps the strength out of people.

You said I have no solutions. Initially I would pare back the state's involvement by making the DPB strictly temporary. I don't have a problem with people using welfare as a stopgap. Once reduced to that level it should be privatised ie people can take out insurance against the risk of a relationship breakdown. Just as people take out insurance against loss of earnings.

It is not a woman's right to have children at the expense of the taxpayer.

Thanks for your comments Oswald.
Well said Lindsay! And Ruth....? The indignant bludger look is soooooooo pathetic!
The Ten Least Successful Christmas TV Specials of All Time
Stupidest headline of the season award
But in the overall scheme of things you will find it hard to beat "Man who molested rabbits had mental health problems".
Council comes to the party
Save those whales...
Perhaps their navigation systems are confused by the 18.2 year maximum northern declination of the moon we're experiencing right now.

It might be difficult to reason a causitive link there, but the correlation is extremely compelling, especially when you consider more and more cases of this happening.

Actually the date of the maximum declination was the 16th of December, but on the 18-19th when the beachings happened the moon was still at 26-23° (ie, only just starting to move back).
Yeah, George! I can see the green-bloggers tearing their hair out.

It's a beautiful thing.
'Danae' - Rembrandt
The romantic Kong
No rest for the wicked. Or for the G-Man.
Iran shows impeccable taste
How can you seriously ban the Eagles yet let Michael Bolton be freely played?
You're a sad man, PC. I decided to be the bigger man and ignore your comments re Pink Floyd and U2, but The Eagles?!! Sheesh.

Guess it's no use asking you to keep an eye out for 'The Best of Tony Christie' for me! :)
Sadly they didn't stop at the Eagles and M Bolton: From Foxnews.com

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179158,00.html

"...Earlier this month, Ali Rahbari, conductor of Tehran's symphony orchestra, resigned and left Iran to protest the treatment of the music industry in Iran.

Before leaving, he played Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to packed Tehran theater houses over several nights last month — its first performance in Tehran since the 1979 revolution. The performances angered many conservatives and prompted newspaper columns accusing Rahbari of promoting Western values.
The Iranian English language shortwave station, which you can also hear online, has had this music in the background with its daily broadcast - so did Radio Baghdad when it existed, playing Madonna in between news items!
Yeah that's right folks.

I gave PC a lift one time and loaded the 'Hell Freezes Over' tape especially for him and did I get any thanks for my thoughfulness? You better believe I didn't!
Rick obviously believes that people should be grateful for all gifts given to them - regardless of what they are.

Can you imagine smiling when receiving a dog-turd (or it's collorary - being forced to listen to some of the most soul-less tunes ever recorded) tied up with a ribbon and accompanied by a "Love from Rick" note?
it's (sic) collorary (sic)?

And 'Desperado', 'Tequila Sunrise' & 'Take it to the Limit' soulless? (It's not a compound).

On the contrary!
No, you meat-head. Merely relating that this quirk has a history...much like your own manevolence.
Investing in rail failure
That's an average of 9,000 passengers per day. A better figure to consider would be the average patronage at peak times. But to take the invested amount and divide it by 9,000 to come up with a per-passenger cost, and compare with the cost of a car, is a complete apples and oranges comparison. You'd need to at least increase the estimate of the patronage to the actual number of unique regular passengers, compare it with the cost of the car and the cost of maintaining the roads, and the extra costs of providing transport to disabled people whose only option you have just removed, and the costs associated with switching freight off trains.

Regardless of the book value, is a maintained railway system really worth just as little as an unmaintained one to the overall budget and/or economy? Assuming that the maintenance is required to avoid the system falling into disuse - for a start, less people on the roads at rush hour means less money needed for highway upgrades, which adds value to the rail system.

That article mentions that patronage has increased 32% in one year; if anything like that kind of growth continues (as you'd expect it to, with no end in sight to the increase in demand vs supply of oil), then the value of it would increase accordingly with that, too.

Besides, there is other peripheral value, too. For instance, you can remind capitalist slaves of its availability when they waste time at work complaining about their rising fuel costs - comparing with rail ticket prices, they will then think about how much they are effectively paying for the "freedom and comfort of the private vehicle", probably start to get a headache and instead go back to working. Productivity increases!
The cost of the car is paid for by the motorist - most of the time that is a fixed cost, as most motorists want a car not just for commuting, but for freedom outside work hours. The marginal cost of maintaining roads is low on a per vehicle km basis, and besides around 40% of the petrol tax that goes on roads pays for it already - plus 50% of road maintenance is a fixed cost - it isn't wear and tear from vehicles.

Disabled people have cars too, and many use taxis, some of which are subsidised, but they offer door to door transport, unlike trains.

The book value of the Auckland rail network is more than the market value - which is based on the revenue you make, over costs, for owning it. That would be well less than $81 million. You wont notice the reduction in traffic so it wont delay increased roading capacity, as it is a drop in the bucket.

On top of that, much of the increased patronage of rail is at the expense of competing bus services - given that the operations of the passenger rail services are 80% subsidised, you don't increase the value of something if you make a loss in carrying more people.

By contrast you could give people back their money, charge the rail system at a price that covers costs (charge roads at peak times the very same) and see if people are really prepared to pay for what the central planners want for them?
In his seminal 1996 paper "the Mythical Conception of Rail in Los Angeles" Jonathan Richmond asked why a rail system was built when all expert opinion was against it? He identified a group of myths and delusions which drove a purely political decision. These same myths and delusions have been argued by the pro-rail folk on this and other blogs. They include for example, the old word city myth, the tourism myth, the progressive image myth, and so on.Here is a simple challenge. All the pro-rail folk assume Auckland's population will double i.e. reach say 2.2 million by 2050.Given that the population of NZ is likely to increase by only 0.5 million or so before going into decline this is unlikely.Also, what is this thing called Auckland? It includes Wellsford just a few kms south of me in Kaiwaka and extends down to Clevedon. Most growth is taking place in Rodney and further south. My hunch (based on demographics, immigration stats, and oversease experience) is that metropolitan Auckland (as opposed to the region) is about to go into population decline. The big American cities are no longer growth centres. The growth is now taking place in Micropolises of about 30,000 to 50,000 people. South Auckland may resist the trend but South Aucklanders do not tend to commute to jobs in central Auckland. Deomographics is driving a massive migration to the countryside all over the world. ARC's beloved Smart Growth, which drives up house prices and increases congestion, drives people out and discourages immigration. Our Auckland planners are destroying Auckland in order to save it.Auckland is already a very low density City and like Honolulu is oriented to the coast rather than downtown. Worse, we have two huge harbours in the middle of the transport catchment which have zero population.Rail is about frequency. The Auckland numbers can never deliver the frequency to make rail really attractive or economic. I have cut the numbers on an Auckland Airport link and you get a train about every forty five minutes. Bad news if you just miss it.There is not a single transport economist, urban economist or traffic engineer who supports investment in rail. Rail provides zero service for our commercial vehicles. Roads do.Auckland rail is driven by mythical concepts.It will not deliver.
This is all true Owen, so why do you support a $1.1 billion motorway north of Wellington, which all analysis indicates users would not be willing to pay for through tolls and which has a benefit/cost ratio of 0.5? There are bad roads too, and the only way this could be built is by central government using taxes collected from non-users to pay for it - which is just as bad!
Judge gives 'Intelligent Design' the heave-ho
I swear, I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas present.
Finance applets for fun and study
'Eternal Spring' - Rodin
Ooo-err! God I love Rodin. He is the man.
Think. Life's worth it.
It's true - my Grandfather, now in his late 80s, is as lucid as the next person. He constantly reads books - not just on subjects he knows. Inspiration.
by contrast my grandmother didn't read much, didn't use her mind much after she retired and slowly deteriorated.
My father was the same as your grandmother, Scott, rather than Lewis's grandfather -- he basically gave up on everything at retirement, and he died of it. AS Lewis says, those who keep mentally alert at whatever age are inspirational; there's no need to give up on thinking simply because you're old.

Frank Lloyd Wright (yes, I have a FLW story :p) ) was 92 when he died, and still working. As he himself said, by this stage his brain was working so well that he could almost 'shake designs out of his sleeve.' And so he did - the last decade of his life produced more designs than any other. :-)
Cue Card Libertarianism - Fascism
While I can see that under facisim and communism. the level of totalatersim is about the same.

you seem to miss the very important disscussion of distubution of wealth. It seems to me that theroatically at least facisims allows the accumlation of wealth by indivduals where as communism does not.
Yeah.

"De facto."
The reason Hitler and Stalin despised each other had little to do with differences in policy - and all to do with the competition over followers. There are only so many who have a 'socialist' (read feeble minded and/or cowardly) mindset - and they were both after them. Eric Hoffer's classic "The True Believer" has more on this (and much else) - it's well worth the read (as is his life story).
Besides, it avails one little to have private property when the State can take you out back and shoot you when ever it feels like it.
I note that in other posts you are in favour of Common Law, but by this definition, wouldn't the entire British Empire be fascist?
Great post, PC. But what some on the political right don’t seem to recognize or accept is that fascism has enjoyed the support of the right-wing constituency and has almost universally been in opposition (often violent opposition) to left-wing parties. All that the political right can say is they have done a (slightly) better job of washing their hands of fascism than the political left have of socialism. They can’t go the step further and disown fascism as a left-wing ideology – it’s a collectivist ideology, but then so is conservatism and nationalism, or whatever else they’re in to. Socialism and fascism (as are their “moderate” versions liberalism and conservatism) are different sides of the same collectivist coin.
Yes, you're right Justin, that is, oh hell ... that is, you're correct that right and left are as bad as each other -- they're both happy, just quietly, to support their own favourite brand of authoritarianism.

It's as disgraceful seeing Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman praising Pinochet as it is seeing trendy liberals praising Castro. Breaking bread with thugs and murderers is breaking bread with thugs and murderers, wherever they are nominally on the spectrum.

"Socialism and fascism (as are their “moderate” versions liberalism and conservatism) are different sides of the same collectivist coin."

All too true.

Sam, you asked: "I note that in other posts you are in favour of Common Law, but by this definition, wouldn't the entire British Empire be fascist?"

Whatever else you can say about the British Empire, it did transport the idea and the practice of property rights and the rule of law across the globe, with the common law system being one of their best and most lasting exports.

You'd have to agree, Sam, that some of the best places in the world to live now are those where the British came, and saw, and then buggered off, leaving behind a framework of law and at least a passing interest in the protection of rights. And making the world safe for trade wasn't such a bad achievement either. :-)

AT, you say, "It seems to me that theortically at least facsism allows the accumlation of wealth by individuals, whereas communism does not." But there's little point in accumulating wealth when you're told how and where to spend it or invest it, or at least how not to spend and invest it. ~Wealth~ really doesn't mean money in the bank, it means having lots of choices available. When choice is limited, all the wealth in the world is of little use.

And of course, those who do accumulate wealth and power under fascism are the same cockroaches who accumulate privilege and power under communism. They differ only in the colour of the uniforms they suck up to.

Rick, there really is a village somewhere being deprived of an idiot. Hasn't your absence been noted yet?You'd have to agree, Sam, that some of the best places in the world to live now are those where the British came, and saw, and then buggered off, leaving behind a framework of law and at least a passing interest in the protection of rights. And making the world safe for trade wasn't such a bad achievement either. :-)

Yes, I agree with that much.

What I meant with my question was, because the law itself is supreme over property rights and is "supreme over individuals" by restricting individual freedoms, doesn't that make pretty much every country fascist?It seems to me that theroatically at least facisims allows the accumlation of wealth by indivduals where as communism does not.

RG-> YeahRG-> "de facto"

Let me just expand on that.

Yes, facisims allows the accumlation of wealth by indivduals where as communism does not. But, as already pointed out above, it is "de facto" accumulation of wealth by individuals. But this is in name only because it is, de jure, merely state accumulation of wealth by an insidious guise.

Essentially Tristan, or whoever you are, your point has already been addressed above as meditation on the words "de facto" should reveil to you.

Sorry if that was bluntly obvious the first time I was repeating what PC already said (and has now recanted as idiocy)....but that's what idiots do don't ya know? Repeat themselves.Rick, there really is a village somewhere being deprived of an idiot. Hasn't your absence been noted yet?

Auckland seems to be getting by on a substitute for now. But I'll be back in Newmarket in a bit. Why you rushing me?
Wiping Israel off the map - politely
Well Israel could certainly do with a few less nukes and bulldozers, and trying to get along with their neighbours.

Besides, in an objectivist sense, wouldn't you want to wipe all countries off the map? ;-)

(for the record, I think this action is deplorable, but then so is the presence of nukes in Israel as are the actions of the people who supplied them and the factions leading to the cold war that led to the conditions that allowed Israel to play the parties against one another until they got them. *phew*)
I suggest Israel get rid of some of its nukes in Iran before the reverse occurs.

I am glad Israel has nukes (which I thought they had developed without internation aid) - they are an island of civilisation in a sea of regressive collectivist oppression and, as the only real rule-of-law country in the region, they are the only state that should legitimately have them.

Get along with its neighbours? There can be no appeasing people whose ultimate end is your destruction. You can do deals with those whom share a common ground with you, recognising your right to exist for your own sake. That cannot be said of Israel's neighbours - only the nukes (and perhaps American military aid) keep them from launching another all-out military assault.
I'm not entirely sure whether Bush and Sharon are planning to utterly appease Iran.

There are whispers over here about secret US military war plans being developed to wipe out Iran's Nuke facilities.

This may be a case of Bush learning from the Iraq war prelude-fuckup (where the US went to war with 2 divisions still at sea enroute to the theatre - 2 divisions that would have been handy in establishing law and order the instant that Baghdad surrendered) and deciding to tip-toe up to Ahmadinejad until his big stick is in range.

This strategy has some merit. Best not give the Iranians too much warning because they have 40 army brigades on the Iraqi border and have been recruiting for more human wave Pasdaran and Basij forces of the sort that overwhelmed the Iraqis in 1982.

All in all, it's a tricky situation for the US, and I'm not surprised that they are using soft-diplomacy in their dealings with Nth Korea and Iran. Their regular military forces are stretched with their current deployments to the extent that National guard forces form ~40% of the troops deployed to Iraq.

Yes, it would be nice to hear some hard talking from those Western who still have a vestigial spine. Unfortunately they know damn well that they don't have enough "trigger-pullers" in place to easily repel an all-out Iranian attack on Iraq.

And it isn't as if the Iranians give a crap about the welfare of their people and the effect of trade sanctions. Their PM has just moved to ban western music being played in Iraq. Won't belong before Western imports are banned too IMHO. Now if Vlad-Putin could be convinced to stop pandering to them that might help. Why Vlad is doing this escapes me. Who the hell does he think is funding the Chechen's who are blowing up Russian school kiddies etc.?

Give the US another year to get the Iraqi military back on it's feet (something they should have done at the beginning but didn't because they couldn't believe how big and organised the terrorists were) and the situation will change again. Of course that means Bush has one fewer years in power with the prospect of him being replaced by Hillary Clinton...

What I do know is that Bush is fighting hard to stop the Dumocrats from painting Iraq as a total US defeat - and that Congressional elections are coming...

As you can see, it's so much easier to threaten military action when you are a fuck-stick dictator without a conscience.
"There are whispers over here about secret US military war plans being developed to wipe out Iran's Nuke facilities."

Not that secret if they're being whispered around the blogosphere, eh Robert?

It makes you realise once again the farsightedness years ago of the Israeli Air Force's aerial destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor under construction back in 1981 - whatever the bitching done at the time about the air strike and its justification, you can be sure that when Iraqi Scud missiles were falling around Tel Aviv ten years later that everyone was bloody happy there was no plutonium or U238 available to put in those warheads. Iran's nuclear programme now seems from this distance to be at a similar stage to where Baghdad's was back in 1981...
Andrew, your idea of history in the Middle East seems very different to mine. Does yours extend back to the forceful formation of the state of Israel?
Residência em Riva San Vitale, Ticino - Mario Botta
Denying prosperity by misunderstanding inflation
Dead right Peter. While the Reserve Bank has been a good disipline on government to get deficit spending under control, it is now a danger to our future prosperity. It is attempting to crush a perfectly natural bubble in the property market, by beating down the entire productive sector. What the hell do we need a reserve bank for anyway? All we need is a cap on government spending and the market will take care of the rest.
What's wrong with what the RBNZ does is that it tries to stabilise prices is that it reverses cause and effect. It tries to push up interest rates to reduce the demand for money whereas it should (while it still exists) try to mimic what banks would do in a free market and limit the increase in the monetary supply to an approximation of the growth in real capital and let the interest rate rise or fall to match demand with supply.

Though I can't really be sure, I think interest rates would go much higher in a truly free market if it were instituted tomorrow. I believe they have been printing money faster than the pool of real capital (consumer goods) has been growing and that if the market were freed tomorrow (RBNZ says it will stop printing money) interest rates would go up as the most productive projects bid up the rate on capital.
Good bloggin' but.Tell me again how it's a good thing to strangle producers and exporters in a bid to keep down the prices of property?

Okay, I'll tell you again.

The arm of government is up to it's elbow in the economy anyway, especially in reguards to the labour market. Inflationary macroeconomic policy goes a way to acting as a big bandaid on the sore created by the other kinds of macroeconomic policy.

Furthermore, the economy has become dependent on the drug of inflation such that withdrawal would hurt it like an angry mother-fucking tiger that was already in a bad mood anyway but had been growing rapidly more pissed off from having his tail pulled and had been waiting for you to let go his tail so he could rip you to ribbons.

And you think folk draw 30year plans for Mt Wellington malls with the expectation that government macro policy can undergo radical change? Shut down the Reserve Bank and it's going to scare the shit out of everybody on all sorts of levels for years and years. Got the balls to do that?
god i hate economics. the minute i think i understand it, i get confused by something else :(
absolutely right PC. Trevor is right that the discipline has been good but the NZ economy is missing out on high end growth through government intervention. the diffence between a barely adequate 3% and an OECD position improving 4.5%.
Much as I dislike Bollard the RBNZ is absolutely essential for the free market. It does far more than set the OCR...it underpins the currency and is the custodian for the open market banking systems. And somebody HAS to do it.

BTW my email keeps getting rejected by your server. I have tried 3 times to reply to you.
Oil at a record high?
'Goldfish' - Klimt
Clapton on Robert Johnson: Going with the flow
It's weird reading this. Last night we watched Eric Clapton live from Hyde Park. The blues stuff was, to use your word, 'achingly' good but the stuff like 'wonderful tonight' is dross, and I'd been reflecting on the staggering contrast between the performances. Anyway my young son asked me why Clapton made 'strange faces' and 'played with his eyes closed' during the blues solos. That is a much harder question to answer than it appears.BTW I think it's Sunday. It better be:-)
You have a very perceptive son, Lindsay, as I'm sure you know. :-)

Seems to me that it's the stuff that is really him is when he really digs deep -- and the blues structure doesn't allow that to be done all the time, more's the pity. But thank god it does allow it - as you say, the stuff like 'wonderful tonight' is dross, and if that was all he played it would be a very sorry night indeed.

I remember seeign him at the Albert Hall when he used to have a 'residency' there over summer, and it was clearly the blues numbers that spun his wheels - he could play the dross in his sleep, and often seemed to be. ;^)

On the question of the eyes: A good solo is not just mechanical, like much of the riffing that a guitarist does. A good jazz or blues solo will 'come from within' and express the musician's soul -- at least, it will if it's done properly. Maybe when 'looking within' it's natural to close your eyes, to help the concentration on the sound, and on yourself, and on really feeling your own response to the music around your solo, and on what you're trying to bring out of yourself to fit that context. Perhaps it can be contrasted with some other things we all do with our eyes in different circumstances: for example, the way we will sometimes look away from someone else if we're talking about something that's particularly close to us; or perhaps when we read something profound, we'll often lift our eys up to the horizon to think about it for a moment, and to somehow help make that thought our own -- somehow looking 'out' helps us link that thought with ourselves, as much perhaps as 'looking in' when playing a sensitive guitar solo helps to 'look in' and make the solo a much more personal one.

"BTW I think it's Sunday. It better be:-)"

Well done. I'd missed that. Ta. :-)
Brian May is the best guitarist.Ever. I guess you have never heard a solo from May.

Clapton sux.
Brian May's a musician?
I first started to think about work and the experience of flow (though I didn't have a name for it then) when I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when the main character described the sense of almost merging with the motorcycle he was working on as he became so engrossed in it that time almost stopped
I remember Nathan Astle's comment after his astonishing innings (222 not out?) against England at Lancaster Park a couple of years ago; the fastest ever double-century scored in a test match, full of boundaries and sixes.